Sunday, April 27, 2014

Homily of Pope Francis for the Canonization of Popes John XXIII and John Paul II

At the heart of this Sunday, which concludes the Octave
of Easter and which Saint John Paul II wished to dedicate to Divine
Mercy, are the glorious wounds of the risen Jesus.

He had already shown those wounds when he first appeared
to the Apostles on the very evening of that day following the Sabbath,
the day of the resurrection. But, as we have heard, Thomas was
not there that evening, and when the others told him that they had seen
the Lord, he replied that unless he himself saw and touched those
wounds, he would not believe. A week later, Jesus appeared once more to
the disciples gathered in the Upper Room. Thomas was also present; Jesus
turned to him and told him to touch his wounds. Whereupon that man, so
straightforward and accustomed to testing everything personally, knelt
before Jesus with the words: “My Lord and my God!” (Jn 20:28).

The wounds of Jesus are a scandal, a stumbling block for faith, yet they are also the test of faith.
That is why on the body of the risen Christ the wounds never pass away:
they remain, for those wounds are the enduring sign of God’s love for
us. They are essential for believing in God. Not for believing that God exists, but for believing that God is love, mercy and faithfulness. Saint Peter, quoting Isaiah, writes to Christians: “by his wounds you have been healed” (1 Pet 2:24, cf. Is 53:5).

Saint John XXIII and Saint John Paul IIwere not afraid to look upon the wounds of Jesus, to touch his torn hands and his pierced side.
They were not ashamed of the flesh of Christ, they were not scandalized
by him, by his cross; they did not despise the flesh of their brother
(cf. Is 58:7), because they saw Jesus in every person who suffers and struggles. These were two men of courage, filled with the parrhesia of the Holy Spirit, and they bore witness before the Church and the world to God’s goodness and mercy.

They were priests, and bishops and popes of the twentieth
century. They lived through the tragic events of that century, but they
were not overwhelmed by them. For them, God was more powerful; faith
was more powerful – faith in Jesus Christ the Redeemer of man and the
Lord of history; the mercy of God, shown by those five wounds, was more
powerful; and more powerful too was the closeness of Mary our Mother.

In these two men, who looked upon the wounds of Christ and bore witness to his mercy, there dwelt a living hope and an indescribable and glorious joy (1 Pet 1:3,8).
The hope and the joy which the risen Christ bestows on his disciples,
the hope and the joy which nothing and no one can take from them. The hope and joy of Easter,
forged in the crucible of self-denial, self-emptying, utter
identification with sinners, even to the point of disgust at the
bitterness of that chalice. Such were the hope and the joy which these
two holy popes had received as a gift from the risen Lord and which they
in turn bestowed in abundance upon the People of God, meriting our
eternal gratitude.

This hope and this joy were palpable in the earliest community of believers, in Jerusalem, as we have heard in the Acts of the Apostles (cf. 2:42-47). It was a community which lived the heart of the Gospel, love and mercy, in simplicity and fraternity.

This is also the image of the Church which the Second Vatican Council set before us. John XXIII and John Paul II cooperated with the Holy Spirit in renewing and updating the Church in keeping with her pristine features,
those features which the saints have given her throughout the
centuries. Let us not forget that it is the saints who give direction
and growth to the Church. In convening the Council, Saint John XXIII
showed an exquisite openness to the Holy Spirit. He let himself
be led and he was for the Church a pastor, a servant-leader, guided by
the Holy Spirit. This was his great service to the Church; for this
reason I like to think of him as the the pope of openness to the Holy Spirit.

In his own service to the People of God, Saint John Paul II was the pope of the family.
He himself once said that he wanted to be remembered as the pope of the
family. I am particularly happy to point this out as we are in the
process of journeying with families towards the Synod on the family. It is surely a journey which, from his place in heaven, he guides and sustains.

May these two new saints and shepherds of God’s people
intercede for the Church, so that during this two-year journey toward
the Synod she may be open to the Holy Spirit in pastoral service to the
family. May both of them teach us not to be scandalized by the wounds of
Christ and to enter ever more deeply into the mystery of divine mercy,
which always hopes and always forgives, because it always loves.

This website is dedicated to a renewal of Christian culture. It is inspired by Sir Winston Churchill, a valiant defender of Christian civilization, who believed "we have a great treasure to guard; that the inheritance in our possession represents the prolonged achievement of the centuries." With Churchill, we believe that a "fraternal association" of the English-speaking peoples must "for their own safety and for the good of all walk together in majesty, in justice and in peace.”